


Older Magic

by Anonymous



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Besotted!Thesival are the Best Thesival, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, sick!Theseus, sick!fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2020-03-01 10:59:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18799003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: The truth was that, like every human being who had ever lived since we dragged ourselves down Pleistocene moss-dripping trees and started sculpting things out of rocks, Theseus was sad and sick and angry at his being sick, and wanted the one person in the world who could do it to sit at his side and chase away the anger and the fear.Simple. Animal.Theseus pressed harder against his eyes, till the Percival of splotchy light got smeared enough to be unrecognizable.Completely impossible.





	Older Magic

The last time anything like a flu had brought Theseus down, he was thirteen, still too thin for his own good, and stupid enough to sneak out of the Hogwart’s gates in the freezing Scottish evening to practice night flying in the Quidditch quad (so the week he spent in misery and potion-smelling air following his stunt was well-earned and even formative, as Nurse Pompfrey didn't fail to remark while dumping medium-sized pyramids of Transfiguration homework on his lap). 

But after growing into the body that would bless his youth and middle age – jutting bones turning into toned muscle and broad, elegantly male lines – and becoming marginally less dumb, no flu or cold or stomach bug had managed to slow him. There was a quiet, sturdy strength at the center of Theseus Scamander (of all Scamanders, included the little brother who trudged through malarious swamps and serpent-infested tropical forests with the steadiness of a British stroller), and almost nothing seemed able to gnaw at it. Even during the War, even in the months Theseus found himself swimming in his army coat and carved down to his bones, he was still able to carry fallen comrades on his back all the way to the hospital tents. The tiredness he brought back to London from France had had nothing to do with meager rations and overflowing cesspits. Theseus had learned to doubt of many things, but not of the solid companionship of his body, the easy power in it. 

So the day the slice of London skyline in his office’s windows faded into gray-white and Theseus came back to himself in a crumpled heap on the floor, Aurors fluttering around like startled birds, he had three precise thoughts popping up in his mind in quick succession. 

_Head foggy. Throat hurts._

_Weasley is screaming – not helping, lad._

_Am I sick? Oh_ fuck _, I'm sick._

He had no idea how it happened. No bloody idea, Merlin’s wrinkled arse. He was pretty sure that was what he mumbled to Potter, as they prepared to Apparate him home, muttering half-coherently into the shoulder of his poor Second. (The boy was promising and fiery, but also made entirely of sticks: how he managed to hold up his boss’s bulk while Theseus's legs were as solid as wet cotton was behind him.) He was never sick. It wasn't even winter yet – the soggy yellowish rain trickling down from the sky almost balmy by the standards of October in London. He couldn’t come up with a single reason he should be fainting in the middle of his office like a starving starlet after too many martinis. 

_Maybe spending the night trudging through that sewer channel on your own wasn't such a good idea, sir,_ was Lovegood’s answer, the voice fluff-soft and amiable and absolutely implacable as the girl always was. _Maybe you should have at least taken your coat. Dried your shoes before coming to the office. Eaten something_ . 

Theseus frowned as he chewed through the words, his brain feeling uncomfortably padded with concrete. _Ah,_ he mused. And then, with more feeling: _Ah._

_That,,_ Theseus was forced to admit, as his flat coalesced into bright spots – _bright, so bloody bright_ – around him and Theseus's stomach came dangerously close to make an acquaintance with Potter's shoes. _Well, that makes a lot of sense._

Maybe he _did_ know how this happened, after all. 

In the pounding of his temples, the memory Nurse Pompfrey pinched face _tsked_ at him – and Theseus found nothing to say in his defense but sheepish apologies. 

_Oh – I don’t think you're not stupid, Mister Scamander. Also, did you just call me Nurse Pompfrey?_

_Yes. No. Just leave me alone, Potter._

Time stretched and twisted in the most prodigious way after that: Theseus had a vague recollection of hands stripping him of his layers – a sharp sting of yearning for other, way more pleasant occasions where hands are supposed to ease him out of his clothes; the sheets of his bed brushing against hot skin, words like ‘fever’ and ‘healer’ and ‘rest’ floating above him like pastel-colored clouds. 

Then – a potion down his throat, a click-clacking of hurried feet scampering around his hardwood floors, the loud voices of people more used to bark orders than to tend to feverish bosses; and finally, finally, silence. Potter touching his hand one more time, _you need anything else, sir?_ and Theseus croaking something in response, half-coherent enough to want to reassure the boy. 

He was a grown man; London’s best Aurors couldn't play nurse all afternoon; they should be heading back to the office. He was going to be all right. 

And he was going to be. He knew it. 

_Yet, yet –_

_Merlin, he had forgotten how miserable this was._

The flat emptied, and in the space left my his Auror cubs, illness flooded. Fever embraced him, wrapped him in cold, wet arms, hungry as a lover. His throat burned; full consciousness slippery as soap. Theseus prided himself in never forgetting he was ultimately made of flesh and bone, that there was a fragile human being under his medals and his muscles, and he was way better at remembering it than the flocks of cocky officers and pampered Minister's officials around him. But this, this was new: this was unexpected. He didn’t quite know what to do with this shaky weakness in his limbs, these bones melting into water. _This vulnerability_. A hazy, contemplative part of him, projected high above the mist of the flu, could almost see the outline of him: golden Theseus, the lion of England, winking on and off like a dying firefly, pinned in the middle of his sprawling monster of a bed, his tasteful Belgravia apartment quiet around him, curtains drawn by the housemaid. And everything so silent – so silent. 

_If they come for me now,_ he found himself thinking, words electric and sluggish, the _they_ as mysterious and undefined as things are only in dreams, _I can't do a bloody thing about it. They can slit my throat, hex me to death, and I won't even know it. Won't even spit at them._

_Won't even say goodbye, in my head, in the heart._

_Oh, don't go there Thes._

Theseus reined his his jumbled thoughts, pulled brutally back from that edge – from the faces floating there, the memories of touching and kissing and smiling beyond it. But it was too late (it was always too late). Here was his little brother: the feeling of Newt's preteen body tangled with his under the covers on Saturday mornings, whispering him the secrets of toads and lizards he had discovered that week and smelling like moss and green things. His mother, kissing his cheek with her chapped lips, her weather-rough skin. And Percival. _Percival_. Oh, imagine that – Percival's lean body straddling him, clever hands working his shirt out of his trousers, the thrill of a shape so like his own and so different in his arms; the coffee ghost on his lips. Theseus's tongue lapping up the hint of sugar at the bottom of it, at the bottom of Percival Graves. 

At the brightness of that memory, Theseus's ribs crushed down around his heart. Eyes burned harder, knees went weaker. A single name undoing a strong man: a spell, that one, a real spell, of magic way older than theirs. 

_Gods, Theseus. You idiot._

Know this: Theseus wasn't a lonely man. He was an _independent_ man, which was a completely different thing, and an accomplished bachelor, and a busy Auror graced with the time and means to try and fix the lumpy glory of the British Wizarding world. (He was an ambitious man, too; though you wouldn't see it unless you were looking real close.) But he had friends, a squad of Aurors who very nearly worshiped him – at least when he wasn't drooling over them and mistaking them like intimidating Hogwarts nurses; he had women and men who partook of the games Theseus offered in his bed, too, and who would do it again with pleasure if he decided to call them. 

No, he wasn't lonely. He had lovers, a family; a best friend – who was also, incidentally, the blinding light nestled at the center of his heart, the thing that made him wake up smiling when he remembered a particularly good quip from his letters. He wasn't miserable, either; never blind to the privilege of his classy apartment and his childhood memories, of talent coupled with money. 

But. But that wasn't it, was it? The meat of the question was deeper. Simpler – animal. 

Theseus dragged his hands past his chest, dug them into his closed eyelids, the heat of fever coming off them in fluttery pulses. He rasped out a sigh. Saw what he wanted materialize in the dark, in swirling colorful spots – the hard slant of the eyebrows, the unmistakable line of the shoulders. 

The truth was that, like every human being who had ever lived since we dragged ourselves down Pleistocene moss-dripping trees and started sculpting things out of rocks, Theseus was sad and sick and angry at his being sick, and wanted the one person in the world who could do it to sit at his side and chase away the anger and the fear. 

_Simple. Animal._

Theseus pressed harder against his eyes, till the Percival of splotchy light got smeared enough to be unrecognizable. 

_Completely impossible._

It wasn't self-pity; it wasn't even resentment. He knew – at least, Normal, Capable Theseus knew: the half of him who wasn't whimpering and shivering under several layers of embroidered quilts – that if he fumbled to summon the phone and called Percival to tell him how bad he felt, how miserable and small he was right now, he would come: without asking for a single good reason, probably hanging up on him to speed things up. But that would be a problem. Percival would be forced to put on hold current investigations; the cases hitting the desk of Director of American DMLE weren't stuff that should be put on hold. He would probably pass them to his second and his squad of young bright things – harassing them with bullet point lists and instructions so complicated and articulated they would forget half of it by the time he flashed away in the Port-Key magic; he would therefore worry about them for the whole time he would spend in London – worry about them handling the case, about them being reckless and stupidly self-sacrificial – and once here, he would be intractable. Restless. And angry. 

It wasn't Percival's fault; and it was actually less despicable than it sounded – being angry at a man who literally collapsed with fever in his office. He was sure Percival wouldn't snap at him either, or outright tell him he was wasting his time and he had better, more important things to do than holding an adult man's hand as he sweated his cold away in his bed. (Unlike most people making the claim, that was usually actually true for Percival, which softened the blow a lot.) Instead, he would chain-smoke his thin Egyptian cigarettes, perched on the windowsill so Theseus's flat wouldn't stink with it, and smile mechanically whenever he came in his room, and follow all the rituals Percival followed when pretending to be softer and gentler than he really was. 

The problem was, Theseus knew him too well not to see past the cracks. And he liked what he saw past them: he didn’t want to force his friend to swallow such a big part of himself just to make himself more pleasant. The Gods knew he had to do it already enough. 

They had talked about it, years ago – when they were still young and tentative and endlessly hungry for each other, still shocked by the privilege of being alive and being together. They had just come back from a Gala, in the lavishly vintage halls of the Ministry's ballrooms. Percival had been charming and brilliant all night, glowing like good champagne in a crystal flute. Now he was pressed against the brick facade of his London hotel, snow peppering his hair and his eyelashes. Theseus was pinning him there with his hands on either side of his head, and trying to convince him there was no need to ask him to come to his room – because he had watched him all night and knew that his beautiful Yank wanted nothing more than burrow under his covers with a trashy novel, blissfully alone. 

_That's not true Scamander – I like spending time with you. I like it a lot._

_I know you do. But I also know you've had enough social interaction back there to last you for an abundant two days, and that you need some space. And it's_ okay _._

Fever gave a silver sheen to the memory: a quivering quality. Theseus remembered how Percival lifted his eyes, then, and looked almost vulnerable – _almost_ , his indomitable Graves –for the first time since the night before the German attack they had been both sure they would die in. He remembered how all Theseus could think of where the snowflakes trapped in his lashes. 

_I don't want you to think I'm some sort of picky misanthropist._

Theseus had cupped his cheek. Curved over him to kiss him. 

_I love pricky misanthropists, Graves._

He'd given him nothing but the truth, back then. Theseus didn't want the prepackaged Percival the world got every day, the dazzling socialite, the charismatic leader. He wanted the cracks, he wanted the hard edges; he wanted Percival not to have to change one thing about himself to spend time with him. 

Theseus Scamander – who was by nature a man of robust appetites, with a robust desire to hoard and protect that fed those appetites – had long since decided that this was the single thing he was allowed to be ferociously possessive of: Percival Graves's flaws, which no one would see but him. 

So, no – he wouldn't call Percival. He wouldn't wake a man in the middle of the night – or was it already morning there? Bloody time zones, he had never been able to wrap his head around them – unless he was bleeding out on the grit-smeared floors of an abandoned warehouse, mortally and hopefully heroically wounded. 

He wouldn’t call him, even if he knew how Percival grew hot and soft in his arms, how tender is the line of his clavicle under his teeth, how _his_ this man was. 

Theseus gave a second sigh: felt it rattle up his battered throat, tasting like the dying things he felt on his tongue. He sank under his icy-hot-icy duvet. 

Told himself to be brave. 

And then – 

An electric shock, somewhere in the back of his head. Skin burning. An easing, somewhere under his breastbone. 

That tricky old magic, again. 

There was someone outside the door. Theseus vaguely recognized the sound of feet on the hallway carpeting, the buzz of another wizard's power frizzling against the wards of his door – and beyond it, dimly, impossibly, he recognized something more. The pressure of a presence: a warmth in a familiar shape. He could see it behind his eyelids, burning bright, coming closer. 

Theseus’s breath itched, and it had nothing to do with the fire in his lungs. 

He knew his scent even before he heard his voice. 

A honeyed kind of cologne; the ozone of his magic; a dash of rain. They all rolled ahead of the soft _click_ of the door charms opening, of the rustle of clothes, of the “Theseus” whispered in the silence – so tender and hushed it made his voice nearly unrecognizable. 

_This, this. If I got blind and deaf and lost,_ Theseus thought, savagely, _if I forgot everything I've ever been and loved, I would still know this._

He knew he was probably hallucinating. He knew some things happened only in those sap-dripping, swashbuckling Fae novels Percival gorged himself on, and in that case they happened to slender young elves, not grizzled magical coppers. It still didn’t stop him from fighting out of his grave of covers, snapping his eyes open. It didn’t stop him from _hoping_ , wildly. 

And he was rewarded for it. 

There was a man standing by his bed: watery light falling on good cloth, slick black hair. 

Theseus had to lick his lips twice before mustering a voice which didn’t completely sound like a peeping chick. 

“Graves.” 

Graves was there – in London, in his flat. He was sheathed in a tailored gray three-piece, his scorpion pins gnawing at his black silk tie, and he wasn’t smiling. As Theseus watched him lower himself on the side of the bed, dark coat shrugged off with efficient ease, he noticed there were worry lines around Percival’s clever coffee eyes, mouth a line, pale and worried. He vaguely mused it made him look older, a man of forty instead of the ageless half-god he usually presented the world with, and painfully young at the same time. It didn’t matter, though. 

_It certainly didn’t make him any less kissable,_ Theseus’s muddy mind mused again. 

“Scamander...” 

Uncharacteristically, Percival stopped halfway through the sentence. 

The bed had dipped under his weight with a discreet _puff_ : He was close enough Theseus could distinguish the smattering of raindrops on his collar, on his neck, as if in the haste he had forgotten to cast himself an Umbrella Charm. 

If this was still a figment of his delirious mind, Potter’s potion was way more powerful than anything an Auror should be able to legally purchase. 

But no, no: he was there. _Percival_ was there. Theseus knew it in his bones: in the tug under his skin, wobbly with recognition. 

Then the handsome man on his bed leaned in to cup his cheek, each callus a map Theseus had imprinted to the inside of hi heart, and every lingering incredulity waned to nothing, and a relief so pure it nearly hurt flooded his chest. 

_You can die, from a love like this,_ was what he had meant to say: which sounded dramatic and poetic and charming enough for the occasion. What his cotton-stuffed brain actually managed to say was: 

“if you were a murderer, you could have slit my throat without even waking me up.” 

The sentence left him wheeze: both with the effort and with the sheer stupidity of it. 

Percival’s fingers froze, still pressed against his cheek, and his eyebrows climbed his forehead all the way to his hairline like startled birds. Then he grinned, and Theseus felt marginally less of a twat, just because of the marvel of Percival Graves smiling. 

“Well, inext time I drop by to sit at your deathbed, I can bring a butcher’s knife and try to kill you, if you want.” 

Theseus shook his head, the movement enough to make him dizzy. Careful, oh so careful of not dislodging the hand on his face. “You’re too cocky to off me like that. Wouldn’t be flashy enough.” 

“You sorely underestimate my sneakiness, Scamander,” Percival replied. “You’re bigger than me, and we both know in a bare-knuckle fight I wouldn’t stand a chance; it would be reasonable to take advantage of you in this state.” 

The smile wavered around the edges. He slid closer, knotting his fingers in Theseus’s hair, folding his whole body around him. He reminded Theseus of the wing of some dark, elegant bird, shielding him from light and rain and cold. 

“Oh, Thes,” Graves said – voice curling sweetly around the word, making it secret, precious. “You should have called. You look –“ 

“Like shit,” Theseus helpfully rasped out. “I know. Illness doesn’t become Scamanders. We’re too pale not to get all flushed and too ruddy to make it look pretty. Noses get red, eyes puffy and squinty. I probably look like the illegitimate lovechild of an albino troll and an _Amanite phalloides_ –“ 

“You _collapsed,_ Scamander,” Percival blurted out – and something in it made Theseus catch his breath. “I stopped by the office – your Aurors told me. You collapsed in the middle of the gods-damned office, and they had to slap you for half a minute before you were coherent enough to understand what they were saying.” A ripple pulsed across Percival’s face – a flash of bared teeth. “I nearly ripped them a new one for leaving you here alone. Ungrateful children, the whole of them.” 

“C’mon. They’re good chaps, they did everything –“ 

“I know,” Percival replied, ferociously. “I just _wanted to_. And I wanted to break things. I just wanted to break things because you should have _called me_.” 

The fingers in Theseus’s hair were shaking, slightly. For a moment he thought he was the one shivering – his blood still feeling unruly, smothering him in waves of heat, and cold, and scorching heat again – but no; no. It was Percival the one trembling: in his hands, in the contracted muscles in his jaw, in his lips. 

Realization came to Theseus in degrees: moving to the surface through molasses. Saying the words felt awfully bad and awfully good at the same time, the taste of honey in viciously dark tea. “Graves. Were you...” His mouth was filled with sawdust. He swallowed around it, tried again. “...Were you worried?” 

Color bled out of Percival’s face. 

“Of course I was. Of course _I am_.” Graves bit his lips. He craned his head, so Theseus couldn’t see his eyes, but only the flickering pulse in his throat. 

Very unhelpfully, his mind remarked how satisfying would it be to kiss him there. 

Under the sheets, Theseus dig his nails into his palms hard enough to stifle the urge. 

_Stop it, Scamander. It’s not kissing time. It’s comfort time. Stop it right now._

But stopping it was growing exponentially hard. Having Percival there, whispering soft truths to him, pale and shaking with worry for him, was almost too much – almost intoxicating. It would take a man with a heart made of steel not to get drunk on it, not to yearn to sweep him up and crush him to his heart and gulp down all that miraculous warmth. Theseus Scamander was many things, but not a steel-hearted man, not at all. 

He rubbed his cheek against Graves’s palm – nuzzling it. “I will be all right, Graves. No need to fuss,” he croaked out. “I may look like something a kraken swallowed and then threw up, but it’s just flu. I’ll be all right. Everyone gets sick.” 

Percival’s nails caressed the back of his neck. He was holding him with painful care and with a trembling kind of strength at the same time, the way you hold a hatching egg. “You don’t.” 

“I usually don’t,” Theseus admitted. He closed his eyes, brushing a kiss against Percival’s hand. “But it’s still just flu. I swear.” 

“You still should have called me.” 

Theseus shook his head. He was going to tell Percival all the reasonable things he had thought about his job and his ambition and the careful dance required to make different hearts tolerate each other, to remind him how much he liked to know his hard edges – when a thought popped up in his brain. 

Bounced off it, swelling into understanding, a sudden burst of inspiration. 

“...Graves,” Theseus asked, very calmly. Opened his eyes again. “Why are you here?” 

Percival sucked in air through his teeth. “By the Gods, Scamander. I understand the whole stoic lawman persona, but if you really would rather have me fuck off then you just have to say –“ 

“No,” Theseus replied, “I didn’t mean that. You said you stopped by the office, and that Potter and the rest told you about my little fainting stunt.” He blinked, hard. The molasses was thick, deductions sticky. “So they… didn’t call you. So you couldn’t know I needed – that I was – ah, hell, about _this_.” He shuffled one hand under the sheets, gesturing to the whole of his sorry person. “The point is – you couldn’t know I was sick, Percy. So either Macusa had been developing some bloody terrifying long-range mind-reading charms my government should be quite worried about, or I have no idea why you hurled yourself across a whole ocean for no particular reason.” 

Silence. Theseus dragged his eyes back to his best friend’s face, and saw astonishing things happening there: eyebrows twitching, mouth clapping open and closed and open again. Percival seemed on the verge of saying something, thought better of it. He tarted pulling at a loose thread in the blanket. 

With a small thud of shock, Theseus realized he had left him speechless. 

“It was a hunch,” Percival finally mumbled, the words all jumbled together. Still picking at the blanket. 

"You don't do hunches," Theseus replied, matter-of-factly. Three things in this mad world of ours he knew for sure: London is hellishly nosy and chock full of terrible people and he loved with his whole heart; tea will always be vastly superior to coffee; and Percival Graves was the most rational man he'd ever known. Graves had a decent gut feeling – all good Aurors do – but Theseus had the impression it almost irked him. He had never imagined the word _hunch_ and his best friend in the same setting. 

A second sign of strangeness: Percival didn’t agree with his evaluation, nor he disagreed. He picked harder at the cashmere pattern under his fingers, a slight flush rising on the back of his neck. 

Theseus wanted to kiss him there, too. Instead, he settled for shoving at him through the blanket. 

"Humor a poor ailing man, Graves. Explain yourself." 

The flush deepened. "You're never going to let me live it down." 

"Probably. But consider it my dying wish." 

Percival's eyes found his face again – not quite his eyes, but the line of his jaw, the curve of his nose. "Don't say those things," he said, and damn him, the ache in his voice made Theseus’s heart skip a beat. He was still rewarded with a quiet huff, a silent armistice. 

"Fine,” Percival relented. “I’ll humor you. It… It really was a hunch, Thes. I don't know how else to describe it." He ran his hand down Theseus’s cheek, all the way to his chest. "I was at the office, shuffling through the disaster Delgado would like me to believe it's the Smirnov report, and suddenly – I felt it. A tug, right there, under the sternum. It felt like electrocution. It felt like a stunning hex you didn’t see coming – and I've got plenty of those, so I know what I'm talking about." 

"Let's make the ban on macabre jokes mutual," Theseus protested, who had been there on several such occasions had held Percival's limp body screaming at him to keep breathing as he struggled to make his lungs work. 

"Fair enough. Well, I was there, sitting at my overly ugly throne of a desk chair, perfectly safe – and yet I was suddenly filled with fear: sudden, adrenaline-bright fear, the kind that makes you angry and savage. It was as if the animal side of my brain was absolutely certain it had to get up and protect its people – except there was no immediate danger to any of them. There was no immediate danger to _anyone_ I knew. And as soon as I thought that – your name exploded in my mind. _Theseus_. My heart raced. My magic was all over the place. For some reason, my stupid monkey brain was absolutely sure you were in distress, and that I needed to get to you." Percival shook his head. "I haunted the office for a couple of hours, making everyone abundantly miserable because I couldn't focus on shit and growled at anyone approaching. Then I. Then I told Delgado and Goldstein I was taking the day off, reminded them they better made sure nothing went up into flames in my absence, and took the first Port-Key for the London Precinct." 

Percival blinked. His face slowly filled with a gentle wonder, a disorientation that made his lines softer, newer. Usually, Percival was a barrel of a gun, all focus, all steel: now he smudged his own edges, and it was unexpected, and it was magnificent. 

"I think…,” he breathed out. “...I think I _felt_ you, Thes. I felt you needed me. No matter how dumb it sounds." 

Theseus felt himself opening up – a feeling so unbearably large and raw it spilled out, like yolk. 

_That this man simply felt he was needed, and crossed the world for him; this was old magic._

This was something Theseus refused not to be in love with. 

He had enough of this distance. Theseus struggled to free his hands from his blankets, ignoring the sloshing of the brain in his skull. He needed the contact now: he needed to feel the skin against the skin. He reached out, to the hand Percival had still pressed against his chest, and wrapped his fingers around it. He felt Percival stir under the touch, react to him; he felt him not pulling back. 

"Percival…" 

"Oh, I know. It sounds as tacky as the stuff in my Sean Lugson's novels. Feeling my beloved’s distress – shit, I think not even that pooka would stoop so low, and Merlin knows the crap he put in his books –" 

" _Percival_." A victory like no other – his voice cracking like a baby raven, and still this powerful man shut up at the sound of it. “I don't think it sounds dumb. I, I think is…" He swallowed. Broken glass rolled down his throat, but he didn't mind, not really. "... You really felt I needed you?" 

"Yes," Percival answered, without a beat of hesitation – obviously before he could catch himself. Theseus grinned. Percival’s flush turned beetle-red. 

"I knew it. You'll never let me live this down. And it doesn't make any sense. It's so _illogical_ –" 

"We're wizards, Percival. I don't think ‘illogical’ is a good category to judge by-" 

"Magic is a perfectly scientific pursuit, Scamander. It has laws which differ from the one of the mundane physics, but laws all the same. This, this is sentimental nonsense. Unfit for serious wizards." 

Theseus let his eyes flutter closed for a moment. He was in no condition to face a philosophical debate with Percival's cunning mind. So he did the only thing a man stricken with weakness and so clearly overwhelmed could do. 

He took advantage of distraction. 

And momentum. 

Before Percival could fully realize what was happening, Theseus's other hand reached across the space between them and sneaked around his collar – stopping his flow of words. Then he gave a vicious pull with both hands – at his neck, at his wrist – and tugged Percival down on the bed. 

Clumsy, but efficient. 

Percival landed on the mattress with an undignified squeak: Theseus reached out blindly to wrap his arms around him. The sputtered curses, the flying limbs, the London rain trapped in his hair – Theseus pressed them all against his chest. It was like hugging a struggling bird of prey: the same fluttering of strong wings, the unspent energy. There was never anything static in cuddling with Percival Graves. 

Fuck, he had missed this. 

"Scamander-" 

"I love your monkey brain, Graves," Theseus whispered in his ear; the rust in his lungs making his voice deeper, thicker. "I love your monkey brain an awful lot." 

With this, he kissed the strip of tender skin below Percival’s ear – _finally, finally_ – his pulse point, the curve of his jaw, still redolent of aftershave. The body under him shuddered: the curses turned into sighs. He felt Percival's arms close around his chest, his legs wound tight around his hips, vine-like, and for the first time since he watched him come in, Theseus allowed himself the privilege to wonder if Graves missed this as much as he did. 

"You'll get wet," Percival mumbled. Mouth moving over Theseus's clavicle, which wasn't the best way to make him desist. 

"You'll get contaged," Theseus replied. With Percival’s warmth leaking through their joined limbs, he found himself more balanced, something like focus piercing the fog. It was still raining: the square of sky framed by the window sable-colored, sheets of a rain as thin as needles slapping the glass. He took a slow breath, and once more pitied the men and the women born in places like California or Florida, where the sun always shone, because they would never know the pleasure of watching the world washed away in cold rain when you are warm and loved. He heard Percival grab at the blankets, dragging them over the both of them, and smiled, secretly. 

"Well, I should at least make you drink some tea, right? Check your temperature. Make chicken soup. Do the things people do when taking care of their loved ones, I guess." 

"Later." Theseus kissed the curve of one eyebrow. Slipped his hands under Percival's shirt – because Graves wasn't the only one skilled at the delicate art of extracting people out of elaborated clothes."Later." 

Percival arched against him. "Later, then.” 

Theseus closed his eyes. He was still so weak; the strings attached to his limbs growing tangled again. He listened as Percival kicked his shoes out of the bed, and pressed their fingers together under the sheets, palm to palm, every inch of skin flush against his, a mirror image. Their magic swirled to the surface, his soft golden buzz, Percival's silver pulse. 

"It's… actually really bloody sweet you felt I wanted you here, Graves. Coming here with no umbrella, no change of clothes – you, of all people. Really bloody sweet." 

Percival groaned. "Oh, don't start again with that –" 

"No, I'm serious; it is sweet." He tilted Percival's chin up with his free hand till they could meet eyes; let their magics brush against each other, flicker at the familiarity. "I want to do the same for you, Graves. If you ever need it, need me – I hope I'll feel it. I hope I’ll be there before you can think it." 

Percival smiled: the smile bright, unreadable, still beautiful. "I know you will, Scamander." 

Theseus nodded; closed his eyes. He fell asleep to the sound of Percival's kisses peppering his neck, the steady tempo of his heart. 

*** 

Years later, and so many things had changed. The sky still gray, swollen with rain; the air still freezing enough to make you breathe through snowflakes – but this was January's cold, which is more vicious and less hopeful than October’s. And under it not London's Gothic spires, but towers of glass, a jungle of darker brick. Busy, so busy this place: this New York, jittery as only young things can be, people and cities alike. 

Theseus was sitting on the sidewalk outside the dignified, glossy Manhattan building of the Macusa headquarters, business men in long dusters flashing in and out its revolving doors. He was smoking a cigarette. He felt one step from throwing up. 

This time, it had nothing to do with fever. It had everything to do with broken promises, with the photos burning in the report Phina had let him see, with how fucking blind he had been. 

(Seraphina had dispensed him of going through the usual protocol, didn't even pretend he would follow the rules in this; still, they couldn't look each other in the eye. They would see their own reflection there, and oh, they were not brave enough for that, not now.) 

He saw the photos against his eyelids, even now. The apartment trashed. Books everywhere – the spines split where they landed in a heap, the covers curled and charred by magical fire. Geography, mathematics; Sean Lugson's _Fey Flame_ , last book in the series, a pencil still tucked between the pages as bookmark. 

(Absurdly, that detail was what had broken Theseus for good, what had made him flee the Auror office and the worried faces there and collapse in a heap just outside the Woolworth.) 

He saw the smears of blood on the carpet, too. The signs of struggle. 

_He fought_ , of course Seraphina had said. _He didn’t make it easy for that bleached bastard. And after taking his place, Grindelwald didn’t_ _even clean them up – he was_ that _sure to get away with this._

_He did,_ Theseus had blurted out. He had enjoyed the pain on her face then, the shock of grief. It had made it marginally easier to breathe, for a couple minutes. 

Now he sucked on the stub of his fag; tossed it into the gutter under his feet. He raked his hands through his hair so hard nails scraped the skin. 

He had been so sure, back then, during the quiet days of his recovery from the flu: so bloody confident he would feel Percival's distress, the ache and the tug he had talked about, and come to the rescue. He was the warm one after all; he was the generous one, chivalrous Theseus, passionate Theseus. 

He had been so sure. And what was worse, a thousand, a million times worse – Percival had believed him, too. 

Instead, he hadn't felt a thing. Through Grindelwald, through the ambush in his apartment – a shudder in the dark, a hand around Percival’s neck, _powerlessness_ , such atrocious _powerlessness_ – through the pretense of the next six months, he hadn't felt a _thing_. 

And now. _Now –_

Theseus's brain sputtered. He refused to push his mind further down that path: his legs wouldn't carry him there. 

There were still no bones, no recognizable body. Rescue squads were still swarming New York, combing the grime of sewers and subway tunnels, looking everywhere they could reach. 

If Macusa was still moving, If Percival's Aurors were still trying, so he would. He would still try, too. 

(There were questions, of course. What they could find now, so many months after the damage was done; if there was some of Percival still alive, what would it be – but no, no; he shouldn't go there either. Theseus would take whoever, whatever they found; take it and thank the gods for it, again and again, even if some nights the thought made his hands shake with the sheer weight of it.) 

A spray of dirty rain on his cheek; the wind finally picking up, the sky cracking open. Rain, washing away the dark snow in the corners, drenching his hair, the back of his neck. _Good; good_. 

He didn't have the strength to pull himself out of it. He barely had the strength to close his eyes, take a breath, and try again. 

For the millionth time since he got here, Theseus reached into the darkness beyond his eyes: the inner thrumming of his body, the pulse and shift of living flesh. He reached beyond them, too, past the memories, and past the grief, even if that felt like slime polluting the whole of him. And there, silence: a core of pure perception, pure listening. A core of older magic. 

_Please, please, Graves,_ Theseus screamed into that space, ignoring the selfishness in the thought; ignoring how much like a heartbroken hobo he should look like to the New Yorkers shuffling past him. If _you're there, if you're_ anywhere _, let me hear you. Call me._

He would not cry. He was crying. An itch in his eyes, and then a tear rolling down his cheek, another. 

_Call me._

He licked his lips. The rain tasted like salt. 

_Call–_

Right then, at the last possible moment – something. Theseus felt it blaze through him, transparent and cold, so subtle he would have missed it had he been doing anything but waiting for it. But he was. Gods, he was. 

In the black space at the center of him, a tug. A stunning hex to the heart. 

A _call_. 

(He learned then, the hard way, that true hope hurts.) 


End file.
